A retired executive that I follow often talks about the great talent that surrounded him in various stages of his career. He also has a great story about listening to the people that you lead. I think about that a ton. None of the managers that I've ever known or worked for were effective without listening. Yes, leaders are ultimately accountable for making decisions, but they can't do this arbitrarily. There is always nuance and context to consider, and you don't gain that if you don't listen.
In technology, especially when it comes to software engineering, many leaders are former developers, myself included. We start our careers by solving problems. It's our instinct to want to fix things and make decisions. The problem is that this does not scale well. I bet most engineers have stories of leaders who became VP's or CTO's relatively quickly, or maybe not having many jobs prior, that stay in this instinctive problem solving mode. The thing is, they tend to lack the experience or wisdom to have most of the answers, and even if they had that, they're not close enough to the makers to truly understand what's going on. So they hand down decisions because, well, they're the boss. Maybe this is true in most professions or industries.
What I've learned though is that, as a leader, you should always be driving toward outcomes. Whether those outcomes are defined by you and your peers, or a larger strategy given to you, your goal is not to make decisions, it's to move closer to the outcomes. I'm not saying that you won't make decisions, but making them requires taking all of the input from those in your charge, even if you don't like what you're hearing. That's where the real value and power of leaders comes from, in the ability to listen.
To be clear, this is not a sign of weakness. I had a (shitty) manager once tell me that I had to "be assertive" and "show them who is in charge" to be effective. But modeling my behavior after managers that I admired, I knew that this advice would only cause my people to lose respect for me, and not get me closer to the desired outcomes. I left that job a few months later, but sometimes the anti-pattern sticks with you.
It's important that we, as leaders, set the tone for listening. It doesn't matter if you're a line manager or leading a nation. We can't have all of the answers, but we can help steer toward the right outcomes when we listen.
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